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Calf's Sweetbreads, Stewed

A stew of calf sweetbreads simmered in stock, thickened with egg yolk and finished with lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 44,316 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

Calf's Sweetbreads, Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the sweetbreads

  1. Put the sweetbreads into a stewpan with the stock and simmer gently for 45 minutes or more.

  2. Remove the sweetbreads and place them on a hot dish.

Finish the sauce

  1. Take the gravy off the heat for a minute, then gradually add the egg yolk.

  2. Return the sauce to a gentle heat until it thickens, but do not let it boil.

  3. Just before serving, squeeze in the lemon juice.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Egg and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Calf's sweetbreads
Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender and soft during gentle simmering.
Stock
Provides the cooking liquid and the savoury flavour base for the gravy.
Egg yolk
Thickens the gravy into a smooth, rich sauce as it gently sets with heat.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens and balances the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Return the sauce to a gentle heat without boiling. Egg yolk thickens by setting proteins that coagulate with heat. If the sauce boils, the yolk can curdle and turn grainy, so the sauce must stay gently warm until it thickens.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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